Tuesday, May 30, 2006

A Flood Of Memories

I once worked with this guy's (brief) venture here in the USA:
Daewoo founder sentenced to prison term 
By Bo-Mi Lim, Associated Press Writer

SEOUL, South Korea (AP) -- A Seoul court on Tuesday sentenced the founder and former chairman of collapsed conglomerate Daewoo to 10 years in prison for a range of charges including embezzlement and accounting fraud.

The Seoul Central District Court said it also ordered Kim Woo-choong, 69, to forfeit more than 21 trillion won ($22 billion) and pay a fine of 10 million won ($10,600).
Kim was indicted in June last year on charges of multi-trillion won accounting fraud, illegal financing and diverting funds out of the country. He was also accused of embezzlement and breach of trust. 
Daewoo U.S. was a screwed up company from the git-go (before GM bought the automotive division, the parent company was in debt to the tune of $50 billion) but I had great fun working with Daewoo executives in Compton, CA who tried their best to execute the nutty directives emanating from Seoul and from Chairman Kim.

Fond memories. Disheartening story. Important lessons learned.

Saturday, May 27, 2006

Today's Wisdom

Is it just me, or does anyone else find it amazing that our government can track a cow born in Canada almost three years ago, right to the stall where she sleeps in the state of Washington and they tracked her calves to their stalls? But they are unable to locate 11 million illegal aliens wandering around our country.

Maybe we should give them all a cow.

Author Unknown

Saturday, May 20, 2006

On Treasure And The History Tied To It

I made mention Thursday of a story that appeared in an Associated Press release of the treasure that was recently discovered above the ceiling tiles in an office in the Virginia state Capitol building during renovation.

Through the magic - and the interactive nature - of the weblog, I quickly received an email from someone who had the opportunity to look over the documents that had been hidden all these many years and were just recently discovered. That person was kind enough to forward these pictures for all to see.

To refresh your memory, the AP writer, Bob Lewis, provided the following;


RICHMOND, Va. (AP) -- The construction dust inside Virginia's 18th century Capitol is still so thick, the stately House of Delegates chamber is barely discernible.

But from the mess and debris, hidden texts have emerged that afford a fresh glimpse into forgotten times - and the issues that dominated debate on Capitol Square.

The books and documents were discovered during the ongoing $99 million foundation-to-roof makeover of Virginia's 200-year-old Capitol, said Richard F. Sliwoski, who is overseeing the project for the Department of General Services.
One discovery, a yellowing, cardboard-bound volume of thousands of pages of legislative and executive branch reports from 1863 contains Gov. John Letcher's order that 5,340 slaves from across the state be used to dig fortifications around Richmond, the Confederate capital, during the height of the Civil War.

It documents that the Virginia Military Institute consumed 5,250 pounds of bacon and just three-fourths of a pound of tea in June of 1863. And salt - then the primary preservative of food - was so scarce the Joint Legislative Committee on Salt decreed that the mineral be rationed: 30 pounds per year for each man, woman and child in Virginia.

Construction workers discovered the book and other documents behind ceiling tiles in what had been the governor's third-floor suite of offices.

"As they were taking down the ceilings, the book fell with it," Sliwoski said.


Another report breaks down by gender the causes of insanity for scores of people committed to the state asylum over two years. One man was committed for "fever and loss of law suit," two men and one woman for love, one man and three women for jealousy and 11 men and three women for "pecuniary troubles."
 

To tie histories together, consider this:

At the same time the boys attending VMI were consuming all that bacon in June of 1863, and the legislature was duly making note of it in the documents discovered these many years later in 2006, Captain Pichegru Woolfolk was driving his Ashland (Virginia) Artillery battery toward a tiny town in Pennsylvania called Gettysburg. It was there only days later, during the assault on Little Round Top on July 2 that Capt. Woolfolk (after scheduling a duel with another member of Lee's artillery the same morning!) sustained a wound that put him out of the war - at least temporarily.

I was reminded of this bit of history - and trivia - when I read the line in the AP story, "As they were taking down the ceilings, the book fell with it ...," for this reason:

Captain Pichegru Woolfolk survived the war and was working in the Capitol building in Richmond one day in 1870 when, according to Harry W. Pfanz in his classic Gettysburg, The Second Day, the "ceiling in a chamber of Virginia's capitol fell, crushing him beneath it."

Gettysburg. Ashland Artillery. Tragic death. Renovation. Treasure. History.

Monday, May 01, 2006

The Upside To High Oil Prices

I read a forlorn message on a community bulletin board the other day from someone in Dickenson County (Virginia). He was essentially conveying his belief that the economy in Dickenson is on the decline because his Southwest Virginia county is isolated from the rest of the country and employers wouldn't want to relocate to an area so far removed from our urban marketplaces.

My thought when I read that was, "So how is it companies in the jungles of Honduras are doing so well?"

We need to talk ...

Dear reader:

1) What was Virginia's number 2 export in 2004?

- Answer: Wood 


2) Where was much of that wood shipped?

- Answer: China 


3) What was the number 4 import to the USA from China in 2005?

- Answer: Furniture 


The number 9 export from the USA to China in 2005 was cotton. The number 5 import from China to the USA in the same year was apparel.

Did you know that most of the shoes being purchased here in the USA are made in China (particularly if they're made of leather)? A full 53% of the world's total shoe production resides there. 


So where do the Chinese get their raw leather? In part, it comes from cattle ranches here in the USA.

So what is my point?

Actually I have two:

First - If we can cut down a tree in Dickenson County, haul it to a port, put it on a boat, ship it to China, have it processed into furniture, package it, truck the finished product to a port, put it on a boat, ship it to Newark, put it on a train to an inland warehouse, truck it to the Big Stone Gap Wal-Mart where it will be sold at some every-day low price, by comparison just how remote is Dickenson County? In this case, it's a heck of a lot closer than the point of manufacture.

This leads to the obvious question: Why can't the raw material be processed right here in Southwest Virginia - as it had been for many decades?

Second - how much fuel is consumed in that process? Trucks, trucks, trains, ships, trains, processing, trucks, trains, ships, trains, trucks, forklifts, trucks ...

With the ever-rising cost of fuel, the likelihood of cotton and wood and leather being shipped half way around the world and apparel and shoes and furniture being sent back becomes ever more cost-prohibitive.

Which means - believe it or not - there is an upside to the staggering prices we're all dealing with at the pump. Removing taxes from the equation (the Chinese don't pay Governor Kaine's taxes), it will become more and more attractive for manufacturers to locate their plants here as the cost of transporting goods climbs.

Dickenson County by God, Virginia - if it plays its cards right - can reap the harvest.

Strange as it may sound, you should cheer when oil hits $100 a barrel. Before, that is, you pull up at the pump ...